Tories are winning the race for policy recognition

With just 100 days to go until the General Election voters may already be tiring of the political parties endlessly repeated policy pledges and sound bite phrases.

Why do they keep saying the same thing over and over again? This a frequent complaint of an electorate that has suffer through the repetition of "long-term economic plan " and "100 days to save the NHS".

But the truth is that most of us pay little if any attention to politics, just four minutes a week according to US election guru Jim Messina.

With such a limited amount of time, politicians repeat their central messages constantly in the hope that eventually we actually remember what they said. In this race to hammer party policy into the minds of the electorate, the Tories appear to be in the lead.

According to new polling from YouGov, for the Times Red Box, on average 72 per cent of voters have exact or vague knowledge of Conservative policies. Labour lag the Conservatives by over 10 points with 59 per cent saying they were knowledgeable of the party's policies.

On individual policies, Ukip's position on immigration is the most widely understood, with 43 per cent saying they know hat it is and another 42 per cent saying they have "a good idea of the sort of approach they'd take".

For the two major parties, voters were most likely to know the Tories' economic policy and Labour's position on the NHS. Labour and the Conservatives have been following the fairly traditional strategy of playing to what are perceived to be their policy strengths.